Pixar blazes trail of tears …

At the end of “Toy Story 3,” I forced my daughter to sit through all the final credits just so I wouldn’t have to make the walk of shame out to the lobby and then to the parking lot.

I was a wreck — a great, big, sobbing, emotional wreck. By the time I got to the car, I just needed to sit there for a solid 10 minutes and have a cathartic, chest-clearing cry, but Emmeline was already freaking out a little at the disgusting display of public emotion. She gave me this look that seemed to say, “Dad, please, man up.”

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Imagine if instead of being shot, Old Yeller faithfully waits around for children who grew up and went to college, never planning to return. Sorry Old Yeller, you’ve just been Pixared.

Pixar must have secretly teamed up with Kleenex in some nefarious plot to make grown-ups sob like their children. Each movie seems to get a little worse.

If you saw “Up” and sat through the first 5 or so minutes without breaking, even a little, you must be made of hammers or scissor kicks. But “Toy Story 3″ took the emotion to a whole new level. I bet even Chuck Liddell would melt watching this movie. But whereas “Up” had me weepy only in the first few minutes, the latest Toy Story became this 45-minute deluge of despondency toward the end. (For the record, that would make a hell of a billboard blurb: “Toy Story 3, a deluge of despondency.”)

I hesitate to give away too much to those who haven’t seen it, but imagine a fantastic, hilarious story line suddenly hijacked by the same people who created all those commercials for long-distance phone service or Folgers. There was one point where I literally had to shake my head and wipe my cheeks dry, repeating a silent mantra, “These are toys. Cartoon toys. You shouldn’t care about them so much! Get it together, She-Ra.”

But the whole experience left me thinking about the evolution of Pixar’s trend toward the tear-fest and how the “sad” parts of its children’s movies are much more nuanced than those of yesteryear — or even the sad parts of its animated competition. For instance, “Finding Nemo” was only made seven years ago, but its “sad” part was much more in line with “Bambi” than the current stable of animated films: There’s a sudden moment of violence, and then the mom is gone. “Old Yeller,” “Where the Red Fern Grows” — I remember these films because even as a child I understood the sadness. It was violent and tragic and came with shotgun blasts and mountain lion attacks. Even the latest Disney princess film, The “Princess and the Frog,” had a sad part kids could understand: A beloved character is suddenly squished.

Pixar is blazing a whole new path when it comes to the sad parts of children’s films, to the point that you have to wonder whether these are adult films children will enjoy too even though much of the drama goes way over their heads. I’m not sure if my daughter actually thought there were sad parts of Toy Story 3. She was scared during the garbage dump scenes, but that was fear, not sadness. I looked over at her a few times during what I thought were the most bittersweet moments, and none of it seemed to register. I left the theater to her happy chirps about how cool Buzz Lightyear was and all I could think of was that she had just witnessed the modern-day equivalent of “Old Yeller”, and I wondered how old she’ll have to be before she realizes it.

MIKE ADAMICK also writes at Cry It Out: Memoirs of a stay-at-home dad. For the record, he thinks kids should be exposed to the sad parts, if only so they’ll realize life is one big incredibly unfair carnival of doom.